The union’s leaders rejected the review’s findings and called for the lifting of the ban on puberty blockers.
Tag: news
UK considers outdoor smoking ban
“I want us to move to a smoke-free environment, want to reduce those preventable deaths,” said Starmer.
BREAKING: Brazil’s top court freezes Starlink financial assets as Supreme Court judge continues to target Elon Musk
“This guy Alexandre de Moraes is an outright criminal of the worst kind, masquerading as a judge.”
UK police arrest 11-year-old child on suspicion of violent disorder related to anti-mass immigration riots
The arrest was part of a series of coordinated raids on Wednesday, which resulted in 14 apprehensions.
Apple Boosts iPhone Orders By 10%, Betting On AI Upgrade Supercycle
Apple Boosts iPhone Orders By 10%, Betting On AI Upgrade Supercycle
Tech giants recognize a massive opportunity with artificial intelligence, leading them to integrate AI features into their devices. This move towards AI-enhanced hardware could spark a larger-than-normal smartphone upgrade cycle this fall, especially following Apple’s upcoming event in just weeks, where they are expected to unveil the latest version of the iPhone with AI.
Apple has prepared for increased iPhone orders. A report from Nikkei specifies the world’s most valuable company ordered components and parts for between 88 million and 90 million iPhones, compared to initial orders of around 80 million.
One supplier was quoted as saying iPhone orders could exceed 90 million. However, the supplier noted Apple usually orders more units and adjusts production as iPhones go on sale.
“We are quite cautious over Apple’s robust orders, as we know the Chinese market is definitely going to provide tough competition due to geopolitics,” an executive at one of Apple’s suppliers said.
Goldman’s Lauren Rowe pointed out to clients, “Overnight an initial knee jerk lower in Tech with Semis and AI stocks initially lagging but subsequently reversed with HK leading in the region with some focus on Apple supply chain on the news of orders for iPhones up 10% versus previous year.”
Apple’s big event is expected to kick off on September 9. Anticipated product unveilings include the new iPhone 16, Apple Watch Series 10, Apple Watch Ultra 3, and Apple AirPods 4. It’s likely Apple executives will provide more color on the AI platform Apple Intelligence
According to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, the AI-enabled iPhone 16 will unleash Apple’s biggest upgrade cycle in history.
“AI is on the doorstep,” Ives said, adding, “Our recent Asia checks are giving us more confidence this upgrade cycle will unleash a long-awaited renaissance of growth for Cupertino over the next year.”
Ives said the next phase of the consumer AI revolution will involve developers and other tech firms integrating their AI models/tech into Apple Intelligence.
“We expect developers over the next 6 to 12 months will build hundreds of generative AI-driven apps that will be key ingredients in the recipe for success for Apple as its technology stack creates the core building blocks of the consumer AI tidal wave we see coming starting with iPhone 16,” he added.
Goldman’s Kash Rangan noted days ago how Apple AI will help “drive an uplift in iPhone demand”:
“At WWDC in June 2024, Apple announced Apple Intelligence, a personal intelligence system which includes features including 1) improved Siri capabilities (deeper language understanding, text communication with Siri, tailored responses driven by user activity and information, etc), 2) language features including writing tools that rewrite and summarize text across apps including Mail, Notes, and Pages, and 3) image features including Image Playground (image generation), new Genmojis, improved photo editing features, and more advanced search capabilities within a user’s photo library. Apple Intelligence will only be available for the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, as well as future later models. Apple Intelligence should be released in the fall of 2024 and we believe these features should 1) should drive product upgrades as customers refresh older iPhones to access AI capabilities; 2) continue to drive a mix shift towards premium models, which should drive continued uplift in ASP; and 3) could present an opportunity for an iPhone price increase. Accordingly, we forecast F2024/25/26 iPhone sell-in units of 232/241/257mn (+2/+4/+7% you).”
Apple’s stock has risen by nearly 18% this year, reaching $226 per share, which gives the company a market capitalization of approximately $3.4 trillion.
The bigger question is whether consumers are willing to fork over $1,000 or more for new smartphones in a period of elevated inflation and sky-high interest rates, thanks to the Biden-Harris team.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/29/2024 – 12:30
TAREN DARR: ‘Back to school’ should include a safety check
In a world where evil exists around every corner, our kids are sitting ducks in “Gun Free Zones” where law-abiding citizens lack the ability to prevent tragedy by protecting those who need it most.
Study Quantifies Germany’s Disastrous Switch Away From Nuclear Power
Study Quantifies Germany’s Disastrous Switch Away From Nuclear Power
Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClearScience,
At the dawn of the millennium, Germany launched an ambitious plan to transition to renewable energy. “Die Energiewende” initiated a massive expansion of solar and wind power, resulting in a commendable 25 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2022 compared to 2002.
But while Energiewende slashed pollution through building out renewable energy sources, it also phased out Germany’s fleet of safe, carbon-free nuclear power plants, a longtime goal of environmental activists afraid of nuclear’s salient – but in actuality small – dangers. The result, according to a new analysis recently published to the International Journal of Sustainable Energy, has been a boondoggle for consumers and for the environment.
In 2002, nuclear power supplied about a fifth of Germany’s electricity. Twenty-one years later, it supplied none. A layperson might think that cheap wind and solar could simply fill the gap, but it isn’t so simple. Once up and running, nuclear reactors provide reliable, affordable “baseload” power – electricity that’s available all the time. Ephemeral renewables simply can’t match nuclear’s consistency. And since an advanced economy like Germany’s requires a 100 percent reliable power grid, fossil fuel power plants burning coal and natural gas were brought online to pick up wind and solar’s slack.
The net result of German politicians’ shortsightedness in phasing out nuclear power is a vastly pricier grid. The new analysis shows that if Germans simply maintained their 2002 fleet of reactors through 2022, they could have saved themselves roughly $600 billion Euros. Why so much? Well, in addition to their construction costs, renewables required expensive grid upgrades and subsidies. Moreover, in this hypothetical scenario where nuclear remained, Germany enjoyed nearly identical reductions in carbon emissions.
Jan Emblemsvåg, a Professor of Civil Engineering at Norway’s NTNU and the architect of the analysis, imagined another scenario out of curiosity. What if the Germans had taken the money spent on expanding renewables and instead used it to construct new nuclear capacity? According to his calculations, they could have slashed carbon emissions a further 73% on top of their cuts in 2022, while simultaneously enjoying a savings of 330 billion Euros compared to the massive costs of Energiewende.
Policymakers in other countries looking to decarbonize their grids should take note.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/29/2024 – 05:00
The Western Way Of War – Owning The Narrative Trumps Reality
The Western Way Of War – Owning The Narrative Trumps Reality
Authored by Alastair Crooke,
War propaganda and feint are as old as the hills. Nothing new. But what is new is that infowar is no longer the adjunct to wider war objectives – but has become an end in and of itself.
The West has come to view ‘owning’ the winning narrative – and presenting the Other’s as clunky, dissonant, and extremist – as being more important than facing facts-on-the ground. Owning the winning narrative is to win, in this view. Virtual ‘victory’ thus trumps ‘real’ reality.
So, war becomes rather the setting for imposing ideological alignment across a wide global alliance and enforcing it via compliant media.
This objective enjoys a higher priority than, say, ensuring a manufacturing capacity sufficient to sustain military objectives. Crafting an imagined ‘reality’ has taken precedence over shaping the ground reality.
The point here is that this approach – being a function of whole of society alignment (both at home and abroad) – creates entrapments into false realities, false expectations, from which an exit (when such becomes necessary), turns near impossible, precisely because imposed alignment has ossified public sentiment. The possibility for a State to change course as events unfold becomes curtailed or lost, and the accurate reading of facts on the ground veers toward the politically correct and away from reality.
The cumulative effect of ‘a winning virtual narrative’ holds the risk nonetheless, of sliding incrementally toward inadvertent ‘real war’.
Take, for example, the NATO-orchestrated and equipped incursion into the symbolically significant Kursk Oblast. In terms of a ‘winning narrative’, its appeal to the West is obvious: Ukraine ‘takes the war to into Russia’.
Had the Ukrainian forces succeeded in capturing the Kursk Nuclear Power Station, they then would have had a significant bargaining chip, and might well have syphoned away Russian forces from the steadily collapsing Ukrainian ‘Line’ in Donbas.
And to top it off, (in infowar terms), the western media was prepped and aligned to show President Putin as “frozen” by the surprise incursion, and “wobbling” with anxiety that the Russian public would turn against him in their anger at the humiliation.
Bill Burns, head of CIA, opined that “Russia would offer no concessions on Ukraine, until Putin’s over-confidence was challenged, and Ukraine could show strength”. Other U.S. officials added that the Kursk incursion – in itself – would not bring Russia to the negotiating table; It would be necessary to build on the Kursk operation with other daring operations (to shake Moscow’s sang froid).
Of course, the overall aim was to show Russia as fragile and vulnerable, in line with the narrative that, at any moment Russia, could crack apart and scatter to the wind, in fragments. Leaving the West as winner, of course.
In fact, the Kursk incursion was a huge NATO gamble: It involved mortgaging Ukraine’s military reserves and armour, as chips on the roulette table, as a bet that an ephemeral success in Kursk would upend the strategic balance. The bet was lost, and the chips forfeit.
Plainly put, this Kursk affair exemplifies the West’s problem with ‘winning narratives’: Their inherent flaw is that they are grounded in emotivism and eschew argumentation. Inevitably, they are simplistic. They are simply intended to fuel a ‘whole of society’ common alignment. Which is to say that across MSM; business, federal agencies, NGOs and the security sector, all should adhere to opposing all ‘extremisms’ threatening ‘our democracy’.
This aim, of itself, dictates that the narrative be undemanding and relatively uncontentious: ‘Our Democracy, Our Values and Our Consensus’. The Democratic National Convention, for example, embraces ‘Joy’ (repeated endlessly), ‘moving Forward’ and ‘opposing weirdness’ as key statements. They are banal, however, these memes are given their energy and momentum, not by content so much, as by the deliberate Hollywood setting lending them razzamatazz and glamour.
It is not hard to see how this one-dimensional zeitgeist may have contributed to the U.S. and its allies’ misreading the impact of today’s Kursk ‘daring adventure’ on ordinary Russians.
‘Kursk’ has history. In 1943, Germany invaded Russia in Kursk to divert from its own losses, with Germany ultimately defeated at the Battle of Kursk. The return of German military equipment to the environs of Kursk must have left many gaping; the current battlefield around the town of Sudzha is precisely the spot where, in 1943, the Soviet 38th and 40th armies coiled for a counteroffensive against the German 4th Army.
Over the centuries, Russia has been variously attacked on its vulnerable flank from the West. And more recently by Napoleon and Hitler. Unsurprisingly, Russians are acutely sensitive to this bloody history. Did Bill Burns et al think this through? Did they imagine that NATO invading Russia itself would make Putin feel ‘challenged’, and that with one further shove, he would fold, and agree to a ‘frozen’ outcome in Ukraine – with the latter entering NATO? Maybe they did.
Ultimately the message that western services sent was that the West (NATO) is coming for Russia. This is the meaning of deliberately choosing Kursk. Reading the runes of Bill Burns message says prepare for war with NATO.
Just to be clear, this genre of ‘winning narrative’ surrounding Kursk is neither deceit nor feint. The Minsk Accords were examples of deceit, but they were deceits grounded in rational strategy (i.e. they were historically normal). The Minsk deceits were intended to buy the West time to further Ukraine’s militarisation – before attacking the Donbas. The deceit worked, but only at the price of a rupture of trust between Russia and the West. The Minsk deceits however, also accelerated an end to the 200-year era of the westification of Russia.
Kursk rather, is a different ‘fish’. It is grounded in the notions of western exceptionalism. The West perceives itself as tacking to ‘the right side of History’. ‘Winning narratives’ essentially assert – in secular format – the inevitability of the western eschatological Mission for global redemption and convergence. In this new narrative context, facts-on-the-ground become mere irritants, and not realities that must be taken into account.
This their Achilles’ Heel.
The DNC convention in Chicago however, underscored a further concern:
Just as the hegemonic West arose out of the Cold War era shaped and invigorated through dialectic opposition to communism (in the western mythology), so we see today, a (claimed) totalising ‘extremism’ (whether of MAGA mode; or of the external variety: Iran, Russia, etc.) – posed in Chicago in a similar Hegelian dialectic opposition to the former capitalism versus communism; but in today’s case, it is “extremism” in conflict with “Our Democracy”.
The DNC Chicago narrative-thesis is itself a tautology of identity differentiation posing as ‘togetherness’ under a diversity banner and in conflict with ‘whiteness’ and ‘extremism’. ‘Extremism’ effectively plainly is being set up as the successor to the former Cold War antithesis – communism.
The Chicago ‘back-room’ may be imagining that a confrontation with extremism – writ widely – will again, as it did in the post-Cold War era, yield an American rejuvenation. Which is to say that a conflict with Iran, Russia, and China (in a different way) may come onto the agenda. The telltale signs are there (plus the West’s need for a re-set of its economy, which war regularly provides).
The Kursk ploy no doubt seemed clever and audacious to London and Washington. Yet with what result? It achieved neither objective of taking Kursk NPP, nor of syphoning Russian troops from the Contact Line. The Ukrainian presence in the Kursk Oblast will be eliminated.
What it did do, however, is put an end to all prospects of an eventual negotiated settlement in Ukraine. Distrust of the U.S. in Russia is now absolute. It has made Moscow more determined to prosecute the special operation to conclusion. German equipment visible in Kursk has raised old ghosts, and consolidated awareness of the hostile western intentions toward Russia.
‘Never again’ is the unspoken riposte.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 08/28/2024 – 23:25
JACK POSOBIEC: Who is the grand jury going after in the Trump assassination investigation?
Jack Posobiec broke exclusive news on Wednesday’s episode of Human Events Daily that the Western District of Pennsylvania US attorney has empaneled a grand jury to investigate the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and consider criminal charges. What has been known surrounding the case is that the shooter Thomas Matthew Crook’s father, Matthew Crooks, has…
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov indicted by French authorities on multiple charges, released on €5 million bail
In addition to his charges, Durov is prohibited from leaving France and is required to report to a police station twice a week.